As promised, I hereby present my latest cinematic experiment. This video draws inspiration from the films of Harry Smith, particularly Number 12 (better known as Heaven and Earth Magic). I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a few years, and finally decided to figure out how. It ain’t “Thriller,” but I think it’s rather cute.

This song is one I wrote for the Ingenious Whittler record Al Smith’s New York, a classic album with sales well into the double digits. If you’d like to hear more, it’s still available.

And, in case you were wondering, the missing thimble has been restored.

After I told my friend Sam about some of the video ideas I had been playing around with, he encouraged me to start using Adobe After Effects. “But it looks soooo complicated,” I whined. “It’s just like Photoshop, with video,” he explained. So I decided to give it a go. I didn’t have a recent recording of one of my songs handy, so I dug in the CD cabinet and found an oldie.

Early in the twenty-first century, Ingenious Whittler released Al Smith’s New York, a concept album about, of all things, Tammany Hall politician Al Smith. Alfred E. Smith rose to become governor of New York, a presidential candidate in 1928, and one of the principals behind the construction of the Empire State building a year later. I contributed two compositions to this epic: “Empire of Smoke” and “Sleep Standing Up.”

The recording process was interesting. I brought the song to one of the Al Smith sessions to see if anything could be done with it. I played the keyboard part (on my old Pianorgan), sang the lead vocal, then left the rest to Pete Dally. When my copies of the CD arrived (it was our first release through Tiny Records and CDBaby), I had mixed feelings about how the song had turned out. Now I realize that the results were fresher and fit the album better than if I would have finished it myself.

Though the budget for the Sleep Standing Up video was approximately zero dollars, it took several hours of tweaking to get the images looking right and flying around the screen the way I wanted. After the animation was finished, it took over a month before I got up the gumption to finally shoot the live action. Once I had the footage, however, I got excited again and put everything together in the next few days. With the exception of a missing thimble, all went smoothly. And I learned a ton.

I fully expect this video to break the Internets when I post it. If it doesn’t, I hope you’ll give it a spin, anyway.

It was getting downright embarrassing. Shameful, even. Finally, it was my wife who spoke up.

“Get some damn business cards, already!

This was following a recent gig, where she found herself using her own business card – with my website URL scrawled on the back – to give to an interested audience member. Very professional, no? And so I finally fired up the Photoshop, cobbled together a design, and sent it off to Vistaprint – splurging for the “signature matte” finish.

O happy day when I found the Vistaprint package on my front steps, almost hidden by shrubbery. After bestowing the first shining card unto my wife, I made like the Easter Bunny, hiding cards in instrument cases, vehicles, road cases, and wallets. Why did I wait so damn long to get this done?

With hundreds of fuzzmeisters building and selling guitar pedals out of garages across the land, how can a guitarist keep up? These days, the market seems more suitable to a platform like Etsy than Guitar Center. It’s kind of glorious, actually.

I had been intrigued by the pedals that Dwarfcraft have been building up in Eau Claire, which is only a few hours away from my headquarters in lovely Madison, Wisconsin. Even though my current guitar sound is more organic and rootsy than ever, Dwarfcraft’s demo videos made me want to dust off my old Atoner and Noise Swash and make a horrible din. They also made me want a new pedal.

My conscience resisted the spend for a pedal that would probably never leave my basement. Then I noticed that Devi Ever FX (Dwarfcraft’s sister company) was selling kit versions of some of their pedals for half the price of a retail model. My conscience weakened. I ordered a kit (a Hyperion). When the package arrived, however, I was in bed, sick, sick, sick with a case of cellulitis (do not search Google images). Once the antibiotics and pain meds kicked in, however, my fancy turned towards tinkering with electronics.

Housebound? Need to keep that leg elevated? I prescribe a few hours of soldering. After a few painful trips to the basement for tools and wire, I settled down to a restful day of attaching stuff to other stuff – with molten metal. And by the time the kids came home from school, I was making a horrible din with my new stomp box. It almost even worked right away (I just had to correct the power jack wiring)! And the usual toll I pay for building electronic stuff – cuts and burns – was minimal. Considering that I was suffering from a painful illness, it was a great day.

A random selection of my scribbles from Instagram, with commentary. Good thing I can sing better than I can draw.

I swear I was not consciously aware of the phallic nature of this sketch at the time of creation. I was only trying to capture an idea for a photograph.

While I was thinking about logo design last week (and wondering if I could do better than simply writing my name with a Sharpie), my Google search led down a rabbit hole to the ancient and arcane art of heraldry. Who knew that such meaning was packed into those esoteric tinctures, furs, fields, and ordinaires? And so here be me first sketch (on a napkin, naturally) of what might become of my own coat of arms. I reckon I’ll need to squeeze a pint of porter in there somewhere.

Whence came the roaring blasts that ruffle the ocean’s bosom calm? I don’t know, go ask your mom. Or ask Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, in whose book The Consolation of Philosophy such questions are posed. O happy race of mortals, if your hearts are ruled as is the universe, by Love!

I would never be so reckless as to write on a napkin while driving at night. Unless I was listening to the excellent “Ghosts” CD by The Triple Tree. The spoken lyrics to The Ash Tree consist of three apparently random Bible verses, repeated several times. Of course, I could have waited until I got home, but instead I grabbed a pen and scrawled the references on a napkin so I could look them up later. My favorite? Job 39:30

Her young ones also suck up blood

The fact that my wife had previously used the napkin to blot her lipstick (which I couldn’t see in the dark car) adds something to the composition, though I’m not sure what.

Such crude technique. Such a poor grasp of anatomy. Good thing I’m such a cutie.